Cultural and Creative Industries in Germany Developing Well

The number of companies in the German cultural and creative industries, as well as the amount of revenue in the sector, have recently shown promising growth. While the number of businesses climbed to over 250,000, the total revenue rose by 3.5 billion euros to 150.4 billion euros over the last year. These are the results of a recent monitoring report on the state of the cultural and creative industries in Germany regularly compiled by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) as part of the Federal government's Cultural and Creative Industries Initiative.

The number of people working in this sector also increased in the year 2015, totalling around 1.085 million core employees (this is the total of both self-employed workers and employees subject to social insurance contributions). In terms of marginal employment, however, the numbers have significantly decreased. In 2015, around 7.4 per cent fewer workers held marginal employment contracts in the cultural and creative industries than in 2014.

Between 2013 and 2015, the number of employees in the cultural and creative industries with a field-related vocational background rose by 6.6 per cent to around 460,000 employees in 2015. On top of this, around 1.6 million cultural and creative professionals are employed outside of the cultural and creative industries and make up around 4.3 per cent of the working population.

The 2016 monitoring report gives some indication of the significance, position and development of the cultural and creative industries within the economy as a whole. The focus of this year's report is internationalisation. The monitoring report was presented by Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Brigitte Zypries, on 24 November 2016 as part of the cultural and creative industries annual conference.

For more information please contact

Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Phone +49(0)6211235-354, E-mail ohnemus@zew.de